Mob of 70 Antifa Anarchists Surround ICE Van in Los Angeles

“A mob of approximately 70 anarchists and open borders activists surrounded an Immigration and Customs Enforcement van with two agents inside on Thursday evening in Los Angeles.

The incident took place outside the Metropolitan Detention Center in response to ICE arresting more than 200 illegal aliens throughout the city during a five-day operation.

The mob was organized by the Koreatown Popular Assembly, an anarchist group, who has been operating a 24 hour “rapid response” hotline to monitor and respond to reports of ICE raids. It is unclear what their planned response entails.

“With over a year of preparation and training the hotline is staffed with around 30 dispatchers who volunteer to do two to three 4-hour shifts a week. In turn the network has trained nearly 100 first responders who are registered based on geographic areas and dispatched with text messages via an open source software platform,” a member of the Black Rose Anarchist Federation wrote of the incident on the popular Antifa website It’s Going Down.

The assembly reportedly consists of approximately 125 members.

As the group had the van surrounded, the anarchists chanted “no more deportations,” “Trump and Pence must go,” and other anti-borders slogans including “f-ck ICE.”

“It is significant that these actions are not the efforts of stand alone activists or NGO directed staff but a result of discussion, debate and decision making by a base of everyday people choosing the priorities based on their immediate reality and needs. The Koreatown Popular Assembly is still small and embryonic but stands out as an example of how radicals can move beyond isolated projects and work to build popular power from below,” the communique on IGD continues.

Neither of the two agents who were surrounded by the group were injured.

The week of immigration sweeps was targeting approximately 400 individuals and resulted in 212 people being arrested. According to a statement from ICE, “88 percent of those arrested during this operation were convicted criminals.”

What it took for Elon Musk’s SpaceX to disrupt Boeing, leapfrog NASA, and become a serious space company

|| Quartz

“The Space Exploration Technology rocket factory is a large, white hangar-like building near Los Angeles international airport, with a parking lot filled with late-model motorcycles and Tesla electric cars. The vast metal structure once churned out 747 fuselages for Boeing. When you get through the front doors, past security and a cubicle farm stretching the width of the building, there it is: Science fiction being wrought into shape, right in front of you.

Right in front of all the workers, too. The company’s two-floor cafeteria is practically on and overlooking the manufacturing floor. Designers and accountants can eat lunch watching technicians build space capsules and rocket stages. There’s a lot to see: Rockets, like good suits, are bespoke objects, hand-made to order; a SpaceX tour guide says much of the work is too precise for robotic assembly.”

Senator says he will learn from mistakes he can’t remember…..

REPORTER: Yesterday you were unable to answer the question of whether more women would be coming out with allegations. It does seem that that’s a question that only you can answer. What is the reason, can you tell us, that you can’t definitively say more women have not come out with more allegations, of these kind of stories?

FRANKEN: Sure, if you had asked me two weeks ago would any woman come forward with an allegation like this, I would have said no. So, I cannot speculate. This has been a shock and it’s been extremely humbling. I am embarrassed. I feel ashamed. What I’m going to do is I’m going to start my job. I’m going to go back to work. I’m going to work as hard as I can for the people of Minnesota and I’m going to start that right now. Thank you, all.

France Seeks To Ban Muslim Street Prayers In Paris After Clashes

“Muslims won’t be allowed to hold mass prayers on the streets of a Paris suburb where protestors and worshippers have clashed in recent weeks, French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said Sunday.

Weekly street prayers have taken place in the suburb of Clichy-la-Garenne every Friday since the local mosque was shut down by authorities in the spring. Local politicians and protestors have tried to stop the street prayers and the national government is ready to take action.

“They will not have prayers on the street, we will prevent street praying,” Collomb told Franceinfo in an interview published Sunday. “We will make sure we resolve this conflict in the next few weeks.”

Collomb emphasized that “Muslims must have a place of worship to pray” while acknowledging that the current solution doesn’t work.

Dozens of French politicians sang the national anthem Nov. 11 as they marched into a gathering of around 200 Muslims in the area. A mayor, members of parliament, local councilors and civilians walked under a banner reading “Stop Illegal Street Prayers”as they tried to push worshippers out of the town’s market square.

Riot police had to separate the groups to avoid a potentially violent confrontation.

Populist leader Marine Le Pen also weighed-in and showed support for the protests.

“The Republic must go on the offensive in the face of Islamist provocations,” Le Pen said in a tweet. “What is the Minister of the Interior waiting for to restore public order and secularism? Laxity is not an option.”

Laxity, or lacité, is the French tradition of keeping religion out of public activity.”

“Los Angeles TV broadcaster Leeann Tweeden alleged in a 790 KABC column that Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota kissed and groped her without her consent in 2006, while she was part of a United Service Organizations tour to entertain military service members abroad.

Tweeden said that Franken had been headlining the tour and wrote a comedy skit in which Franken’s character attempted to kiss Tweeden’s character. Tweeden said she believed she could turn her head or cover his mouth with her hand “to get more laughs from the crowd.”

But during a rehearsal of the kiss that Franken repeatedly insisted on, Tweeden said, Franken forcefully kissed her.

“He repeated that actors really need to rehearse everything and that we must practice the kiss. I said ‘OK’ so he would stop badgering me,” Tweeden wrote. “We did the line leading up to the kiss and then he came at me, put his hand on the back of my head, mashed his lips against mine and aggressively stuck his tongue in my mouth.”

Tweeden said she felt “disgusted and violated” by the kiss and pushed Franken away and told him that if he ever did that again, she “wouldn’t be so nice about it the next time.”

Later, the pair performed the skit and Tweeden said she turned her head to dodge Franken’s kiss.

She added that she told neither the tour’s sponsor, the Sergeant Major of the Army, nor the USO representative about the incident.

“At the time I didn’t want to cause trouble. We were in the middle of a war zone, it was the first show of our Holiday tour, I was a professional, and I could take care of myself. I told a few of the others on the tour what Franken had done and they knew how I felt about it,” Tweeden wrote. “I tried to let it go, but I was angry.”

But Franken’s alleged misconduct didn’t end there, Tweeden said. Franken groped her breasts while she was asleep during the 36-hour trip back to Los Angeles — an incident captured in a photograph that Tweeden didn’t see until she was back in the US.

“I couldn’t believe it. He groped me, without my consent, while I was asleep,” she wrote. “I felt violated all over again. Embarrassed. Belittled. Humiliated. … How dare anyone grab my breasts like this and think it’s funny?”

Tweeden said she told her husband about Franken’s behavior and showed him the photograph. She said she did not speak publicly about the incidents because she was worried about backlash and damage to her broadcasting career.

But thanks to the slew of recent public allegations made against prominent figures such as film producer Harvey Weinstein, Tweeden said she is no longer afraid to come forward.

“Senator Franken, you wrote the script,” she wrote. “But there’s nothing funny about sexual assault … You knew exactly what you were doing. You forcibly kissed me without my consent, grabbed my breasts while I was sleeping and had someone take a photo of you doing it, knowing I would see it later, and be ashamed.

“I’m telling my story because there may be others.”

In a statement sent to Business Insider, Franken apologized to Tweeden.

“I certainly don’t remember the rehearsal for the skit in the same way, but I send my sincerest apologies to Leeann. As to the photo, it was clearly intended to be funny but wasn’t. I shouldn’t have done it,” he said.”

Senator Al Franken Kissed and Groped Me Without My Consent, And There’s Nothing Funny About It

|| KABC

“By Leeann Tweeden

In December of 2006, I embarked on my ninth USO Tour to entertain our troops, my eighth to the Middle East since the 9/11 attacks. My father served in Vietnam and my then-boyfriend(and now husband, Chris) is a pilot in the Air Force, so bringing a ‘little piece of home’ to servicemembers stationed far away from their families was both my passion and my privilege.

Also on the trip were country music artists Darryl Worley, Mark Wills, Keni Thomas, and some cheerleaders from the Dallas Cowboys. The headliner was comedian and now-senator, Al Franken.

Franken had written some skits for the show and brought props and costumes to go along with them. Like many USO shows before and since, the skits were full of sexual innuendo geared toward a young, male audience.

As a TV host and sports broadcaster, as well as a model familiar to the audience from the covers of FHM, Maxim and Playboy, I was only expecting to emcee and introduce the acts, but Franken said he had written a part for me that he thought would be funny, and I agreed to play along.

When I saw the script, Franken had written a moment when his character comes at me for a ‘kiss’. I suspected what he was after, but I figured I could turn my head at the last minute, or put my hand over his mouth, to get more laughs from the crowd.

On the day of the show Franken and I were alone backstage going over our lines one last time. He said to me, “We need to rehearse the kiss.” I laughed and ignored him. Then he said it again. I said something like, ‘Relax Al, this isn’t SNL…we don’t need to rehearse the kiss.’

100 Officials Singing La Marseillaise Drown Out Islamic Prayers

|| the Gateway Pundit

“In a scene perhaps reminiscent of film classic, Casablanca, a defiant crowd of two hundred Parisians faced-off with Islamic protestors, Friday lunchtime, attempting to end a street protest which has brought the town center to a standstill each Friday afternoon for eight months.

As reported by the Gateway Pundit in spring, Clichy-la-Garenne, several métro stops from central Paris, has been the scene of Friday street prayers by Muslims demanding the town provide a new mosque in the heart of Clichy – despite the opening, at tax-payer expense, of a new prayer room and Islamic center a short distance away.

At 12:30pm, close to one hundred elected officials from right and centrist parties, wearing saches in the red, white and blue of the French Republic, assembled outside the town hall and marched towards the site of Friday’s Islamic street prayers – a pedestrianized street where two hundred Muslims were gathering a short distance away.

As the republican cortège neared the street protest, a dozen or so elected officials physically attempted to prevent Friday prayers from taking place at which point heavily armed CRS, French riot police, intervened forming a double cordon between the Muslim gathering and the elected officials and supporters.

Led by Mayor Rémi Muzeau, the march pressed closer to the police line, breaking into La Marseillaise, the French national anthem, and advancing until such point as the two opposing groups were mere feet apart.

In the surreal moments that followed, the Muslim faithful – mostly of North African descent, some of whom were dressed in traditional Islamic garb – offered up incantations in Arabic as the elected representatives and longtime Clichy residents continued their patriotic rendition of La Marseillaise, the two sides squaring off against one another.

Minor scuffles broke out on the fringe of the protest and police temporarily struggled to maintain order as tempers flared leading up to the moment the two opposing sides came face to face.

Friday’s protest represents the first time the Islamic protesters were seriously challenged since their street prayers began in March this year, apart from a minor demonstration by secular protesters earlier in the week.

‘’We cannot accept that the public space is occupied in this manner. The mayor is powerless. It’s up to the State to act’’, Valérie Pécresse, regional president of the conservative Les Républicains explained to the assembled media.

The mayor of Clichy, Rémi Muzeau (also of Les Républicains) went further, calling on the French Minister of the Interior, Gérard Collomb, to ban the illegal street prayers, citing his duty to ensure the tranquility and liberty of the town’s 60,ooo inhabitants.

‘‘They present a bad image of our town on social media and to the whole world, and I don’t want that’’, Muzeau explained to RTL radio, calling on the state to finally intervene.

As the Gateway Pundit reported earlier this year, the mayor of Clichy chose not to renew a short-term lease granted by his socialist predecessor, which had allowed members of the local Muslim community to utilize a city building as a mosque and Islamic cultural center. In its place, he opened an Islamic center and prayer room a short distance away.

Representatives of the town’s 20,000 strong Muslim population say the building is badly served by public transport however, and have vowed to continue to observe their Friday prayers in the open on the streets of Clichy until a suitable facility is provided.

Through-out France, a massive expansion of mosque building is underway, including huge ‘cathedral mosques’ nearing completion across the historically Catholic country, a sign of the country’s shifting demographics.

Thus far, there has been no reaction from President Macron’s Interior Minister, Gérard Collomb, to Friday’s events.

French social media lit up in support of the counter protest, Friday evening, with Clichy Mayor, Rémi Muzeau calling the event ”an immense success” and vowing to counter protest the street prayers every Friday until the state takes action.”

“Tucker Carlson invited Hollywood director Rob Reiner tonight to discuss his latest Russia War video ad he released with Morgan Freeman and a group of leftie and anti-Trump RINOs.

Morgan Freeman told Americans this week in the latest anti-Trump Hollywood production, “We are at war with Russia.”

The Committee to Investigate Russia produced the video this week. The committee includes Rob Reiner, James Clapper, and Max Boot.

Tucker Carlson had Rob Reiner on his show and destroyed him over this Hollywood conspiracy.

Tucker Carlson: I agree with you we are very divided. And maybe this is one of the reasons. A lot of this is disingenuous. Anyone who looks at cyber warfare will tell you, any honest person, will tell you the Chinese military is the primary culprit in the United States, hacked into the White House not too long ago… Nobody said anything. You guys in Hollywood sell your movies in China. You bow to the imperatives of their propaganda and censorship office. You change your movies to suit them. And yet no one says we’re at war with China.”

China’s influence over Hollywood grows

|| The Washington Post

“China has never been shy about its desire to acquire “soft power” – the kind of cultural and economic influence that can’t be wielded by military might. And Hollywood has often been a partner in its project.

China’s bid for soft power was on show this week, as Sony Pictures Entertainment formed an alliance with Dalian Wanda, a Chinese company that has become one of the world’s largest media empires, in a deal announced Friday. While the partnership was smaller than some of Dalian Wanda’s previous acquisitions, it attracted attention as the Chinese company’s third major deal in Hollywood this year.

These deals have sparked concern over whether China’s expanding influence in Hollywood could lead to more pro-Chinese propaganda in U.S. films. The Chinese government tightly controls media content, and Hollywood studios have been known to alter films to feature China or the Chinese government in a more flattering light to gain access to the country’s lucrative film market.

For Hollywood, China provides the blockbuster combination of a huge movie market and cash-rich equity funds that are eager to invest in films and companies. The Chinese box office is on pace to soon surpass the U.S. as the world’s biggest market, perhaps next year.

On Sept. 15, 16 members of Congress mentioned the Chinese company by name in a letter that called for greater scrutiny of foreign investments. The 14 Republicans and two Democrats said that Dalian Wanda’s acquisitions have raised concerns “about China’s efforts to censor topics and exert propaganda controls on American media.”

The partnership — in which the Chinese company will help promote Sony films in China and co-finance some of Sony’s biggest China movie releases — comes on the heels of two major acquisitions. In January, Dalian Wanda announced the acquisition of Legendary Entertainment, the Hollywood production company behind such blockbusters as “Jurassic World” and “The Dark Knight.” In March, AMC Entertainment, a U.S. cinema chain previously acquired by Dalian Wanda, made a bid for Carmike Cinemas that would make Dalian Wanda Group the owner of the biggest cinema chain in the United States.

The Chinese company is expanding elsewhere, acquiring cinema chains in Australia and Europe in steps toward its goal of controlling 20 percent of the global film market by 2020. It is also heavily investing in China’s domestic industry, including a 400-acre film studio slated to open in 2017 that will have 30 soundstages, an underwater stage, and a permanent set of a New York City street.”

The NFL Is Dying As Middle Class Americans Say “TURN IT OFF”

“The first two weeks of ratings for the NFL were down twelve and then fifteen percent respectively.

That’s a huge drop and a downward trend that has owners and the league worried as advertising profits are certain to slide as well.

The timing of the decline in ratings is clear – as some players chose to use their platform to push an anti-American/anti-police/anti-military/anti-Trump agenda, millions of fans responded with a collective HELL NO and found other things to occupy their free time.

Last season then San Francisco QB Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance as it played before the game. His protest was a Black Lives Matter inspired gesture – the same Black Lives Matter group that has on more than one occasion called for the killing of police and white people.

Kaepernick now finds himself on the outside of the NFL looking in. He was dropped by the 49er’s for his poor play. Other players this season are now staging similar protests even as an increasing number of fans would clearly rather those players focus on playing football for which they are paid millions of dollars per season for doing so.

And so the ratings continue to drop by double-digits. A New York Post report indicated a ten percent drop in ratings will cost the major networks of CBS, Fox, ESPN, and NBC $200 million in lost operating income.

That’s real money.

Should ratings decline by twenty percent the league would experience a full-blown fiscal crisis that could threaten the very viability of the league itself. Players are protesting themselves right out of a job. A handful of spoiled millionaire athletes taking on the traditional values of millions of Middle Class Americans isn’t good for business.”